Jeon Jong-seo to join Kate Hudson in ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’ fantasy adventure

Hollywood star Kate Hudson and South Korean actress Jeon Jong-seo play two underdogs on a collision course with their environment in Ana Lily Amirpour’s competition at the Venice Film Festival “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon”.

The fantasy adventure opens with Jeon’s mysterious Mona Lisa using supernatural powers to break free from the maximum-security wing of a mental asylum in New Orleans. Fleeing from the police, she finds herself in the noisy French Quarter of the city where she comes to the rescue of exotic dancer and single mother Bonnie (Hudson) who in turn welcomes her.

Mona Lisa, with a taste for junk food and a fondness for underdogs, forms an unlikely friendship with Bonnie’s young son, Charles, and a local drug dealer (Ed Skrein), who are unmoved by his abilities to another world.

“I wanted to find what is optimistic about this madness that we are all in. And I think friendship is such a defining and important thing. It nourishes us so much and it can take so many forms,” Amirpour said in a commentary. interview with Reuters ahead of the film’s world premiere in Venice.

“I’ve definitely always been an alien in almost every way, literally coming from somewhere else, looking different, speaking differently, adjusting and surviving through it and also just not being into the things that seemed like everyone was when I found my own space, “the English-born Iranian-American filmmaker said at a press conference.

Amirpour, whose 2016 dystopian thriller “The Bad Batch” also premiered in Venice, cast Hudson in a role the “Almost Famous” and “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days” actress relished.

“She was pregnant the first time I met her. I was like ‘So if we can get this baby out, you wanna come over and be a stripper?’ And she was like ‘yeah, cool’, “Amirpour joked at the press conference.

“I kind of found this to be a celebration of people living very hard lives,” Hudson, 42, told Reuters.

“I think there’s that kind of liberating thing so you can just live your way and not care what other people think about your choices. And that was fun. It was fun to get into that. with Bonnie, ”Hudson added.

Along with Mona Lisa, Amirpour said she wanted to create a new kind of hero who can reinvent themselves by moving around different environments.

“It’s freedom. It’s exciting,” Amirpour said at the press conference, adding that she hoped her protagonist would inspire young viewers to embrace their inner nutcase.